Tori Story 001
by Mistress Jakira
Summary: It never really had a title. Yoroiden Samurai Troopers (Ronin Warriors) fic about my original character--but it involves Sage, too. Dub references...Tori stories are PG just in case.


Tori ambled along the now-bloodsoaked ground, near tears because of the blasted curses, even though it was not the plagues she was thinking of. Every time it rained blood, though, she always cried. She saw a man dressed in a black overcoat covering a white shirt, who, from the shirt's label, seemed to be an apothecary of some sort, just like the men she had seen before at the pharmacy. Somehow seeing the man's troublesome situation of trying to protect his white shirt from the heavy red rain (and, of course, seeing his confusion that the rain was red at all) assuaged Tori's pain. Several county officials were running around frantically, trying to figure out what was going on. She figured she'd know what was to be on the news that night.   
Tori turned to her right to see a boy she had heard of named Thomas and his four brothers walking home from school. To her left was a girl wearing a low-cut top and a miniskirt; a corset was also visible. The sight reminded Tori of her strict math teacher's firm dictum on the school dress code and how it should never, ever, under any circumstances be violated. This girl must have received quite a lecture that day.   
She approached her domicile apartment room, taking out the key and unlocking the door. She eyed the eaves thoughtfully as she walked inside, just like she always did. Hungry, she raided the refrigerator looking for a late lunch. Definitely not filling, I suppose, but tasty…she mused to herself about the sugary cereal she had eventually chosen for her meal.   
Tori thought about her impudent fight with--what was his name? Oh yes, Ken, it was--Ken earlier that day. After that incident, she had been sent by an administrator to that malevolent abomination they called the principal, where she hadn't been too polite either. She had told him that she would have sooner driven a picket through the man's chest than listened to his mindless chatter about respect and the like, and unless that was what one considered as "polite"…   
But anyway, she had spoken her words with a spirit of piety, and that was all that really mattered, wasn't it? She had a predilection for speaking so, she thought. If she delved into her memory far enough she could probably write up a long repertoire of situations like that she'd been in.   
These were rather dull thoughts, Tori concluded, and searched her mind for anything interesting to think about. Her thoughts drifted back to how she had scolded that boy Ken, shouting at him inappropriately as she had. She wondered why this sudden outburst occurred, since, after all, she was usually quite taciturn.   
Tori set down her backpack while she thought, and wiped the non-cable television screen with a paper towel, being sure it was completely unsullied. She threw out the towel, sighed, and stared out the window, looking at the striped veranda that covered the front of the little market across the wide road. Looking to her left, she could see where the paved road gave way to the short auburn dirt path. She observed that the dirt road was now almost crimson, due to the plague of blood rain that had fallen earlier; it had subsided gradually since then, and she had not noticed. It was only natural that she hadn't noticed, though, because to a world that included blood rain, floating knives, and constant demonic possession of others she was indigenous.   
Sighing again, and she looked around her home and wished she were merely on a short trip to Florida rather than living here in a permanent dwelling place such as this one. Everything about everything, even her apartment, was a vexation to her mental state, constantly harassing her mind because she knew she could not do better on the financial side, go to school, and train with her armor at the same time. Though she had a tendency to at times condescend others as if she were better than they were, this was, in fact, the way she really felt about things. She really didn't have it so well.   
She considered the reason that she did this was because she was aware of her cunning battle skills and secretly upheld her armor and skill with it as a symbol of high stature, despite that nobody knew about it--excluding herself, of course. But she could not be sure of any of this, as her own thinking was difficult even for she herself to fully comprehend. In spite of this, she had thought many times of seceding from the big war that was going on. But then, she knew that it subsequently would mean the sealed fate of the planet.   
Letting out another heavy sigh, she affirmed that she would not wallow in her sorrows, at least not today. She looked upward out her window, resting her elbows on the sill, watching a covey of birds glide across the bright mid-afternoon sky. Snapping out of her trance, she realized that she would have a particularly large entailment of math homework inherited from the teacher tomorrow if she did not finish it today and decided that she would start it now. She tried to concentrate, but her eyes kept drifting toward the small green plants she could see from out another window. Knowing that doing homework was an extreme mortification until she absolutely must do it (her equivalent of which was scribbling down answers before the teacher collected the paper), she sat up from her chair. She knew that such procrastination should be regarded as illicit, but unfortunately she didn't have the willpower to quit the nasty habit. It was quite a nice, amiable habit, though; that is, up until the point where she actually had to scratch down the answers quicker than lightning before it was too late. It was only the contentious teachers who made this habit routinely nightmarish, Tori mused. The sad thing was not this, but that the friendly ones and the touchy ones were fairly indiscernible at times.   
Tori's erratic thinking stopped abruptly when she heard a knock on her door. Her stomach immediately began to feel as if a gallon of kerosene--or some thinning resolve remotely like it--had been dumped into it when she opened the door to see Sage, the boy she had met a few weeks ago, standing in the threshold. He told her that it took some prying into the lady at the desk down the stairs, but he persevered to talk the information out of her, and finally got Tori's apartment number, saying that the woman was "mighty gullible." He said he and the woman had come to a mutual compromise, and Tori wasn't sure the exact meaning of this statement, but wasn't about to ask; all she said was hello. Tori couldn't think of anything else to say, since she was feeling small at the moment; she also couldn't think of why this was.   
"Is that all you have to say is hello? After the woman at the desk just told a perfect stranger your apartment number?" Sage asked with a laugh, the general dispensation of an everyday conversation not present, as there was an incredible tenseness that beat down on Tori like a huge boulder dropped on her back.   
The fractious click-clack, clack-click of the sink dripping just slightly became more apparent to Tori as she stared at Sage, nothing in particular on her mind. At least this wasn't one of those monosyllabic conversations she had heard many times between people, she thought to herself.   
The usual tranquility she felt when at home began to swiftly dissipate as she continued to stare straight through the boy standing in front of her. Sage looked at her with a tangible hint of a contemptuous stare, and asked her if she was all right. The strange look slipped away when Tori replied that she was fine and had just fallen asleep on her feet, so to speak. Sage observed that a small, whirling eddy began to make itself visible within Tori's eyes, and suggested that she get some rest and that he would come by later to talk, say, tomorrow. An apologetic expression came over his face suddenly, and he said he was sorry for barging in, of sorts. In a sudden burst of spontaneous reaction, Tori quickly told him it was all right and that he was probably right that she should get some rest. Sage bowed to Tori in a polite gesture before he shut the door, and they said their goodbyes, as the auspicious feeling of an arrow piercing Tori came over her; it wasn't painful, however. Somehow…   
Tori sat on the couch and turned on the television, which displayed a chef who was holding up an amber-colored wine bottle and murmuring something about scuppernongs. That same familiar melancholy silence washed over Tori's surroundings once again, and it was the last thing she noticed before she drifted off to sleep.   
Tori woke with a start from her dream--one heavily involving Sage that she suddenly couldn't quite remember--in half an hour. The atmosphere surrounding her home environment quelled her to the insane thrashing that had apparently taken place during the dream.   
An asinine feeling overtook her as she recollected the day's events: school, thinking, homework, not doing homework, thinking, talking to Sage, sleeping. Though she could not recall the dream, she cordially thanked God that it was not real; she knew it was a nightmare that she would never want to happen, but no details came to her at that moment. She wondered about the dream, trying to recall it while at the same time not wanting to remember it. Placidly she continued to think about it, when the vision came to her: The demon attacking Sage, who was in heavy armor with a thunderbolt piece centered on the helmet, though why on earth she would imagine him clad in green armor was over her head.   
She was more concerned about the demon attacking him, however. What she next remembered was a boy with dark skin in fire red armor appearing, and saving the struggling Sage from the repulsive demon's iron grip, the Japanese kanji for benevolence glowing the same bright red of his armor upon his forehead. Tori saw a look suggesting the edification of some important reality come over Sage.   
Then there she was, Toralyn Raiden, in her own Armor of Thunderbolt, lying unconscious in a patch of mimosa, blood seeping from her mouth. A tacit language was silently spoken between Sage and the demon now, as they began again to battle; tears were streaming freely now down Sage's dirty face. The boy in the red armor had already disappeared somehow. In her flashback to the dream still, Tori saw her own face take on a benign expression; she was coming to. The dream faded out before Tori saw the demonic embodiment impale Sage--going straight through the armor, she knew it would--with its sharp talons, and she awoke from her second trance that day, finding her mouth agape. Of all the terrifying, morbid things to dream of, Tori shouted mentally at herself, close to tears just from watching it and realizing that in the dream Sage was only trying to protect her.   
She thought back to the bed of mimosa surrounding her in the dream, seeing beyond just the mimosa this time, a whole forest with flowers and some strange, out-of-place field of collards growing on a farmer's lot. Tori snapped a mental camera, capturing more memories of the image and knowing it was important to remember the scene, developing the picture in her mind.   
She thought the dream inconceivable to be a vision, because her fighting prowess must have been nothing less than perfect; there wasn't a warrior on earth--or in the Netherworld, the deep fires of hell, or anywhere else for that matter--that could overpower her. Her body became rigid, as she accounted that her being invincible may not be an issue; she was nothing of the sort and knew it, but liked to regard herself as so. She dismembered all parts of the dream from her mind and relaxed, thinking that all this was far too stressful for a Monday.   
Tori stared out her window down at the kudzu that covered the ground on the apartment building's lot, her mind unfocused once again. She turned her gaze forward to the other ramshackle apartment buildings; living uptown was pretty hectic, and there were many apartments for people who couldn't find a house or were just too poor to get one; Tori fell into both categories.   
Tori's alarmed state waned down to calm once more as the clock's hands approached 6 P.M., Eastern Standard Time, and she almost fell asleep, but memories of the dream awoke her whenever she felt herself submit to the weight of her eyelids. The same eerie feeling overtook her now as in the dream; though it did not happen in the dream, it was in the past and remembered in the separate reality that the dreams existed therein. She felt the malignant intentions of the demon in her dream, which she now recognized as a reality--or maybe a symbolic vision--though she was not sure which.   
She knew that she had to find Sage because he was the key to the whole dream, and if she talked to him then maybe by some chance she could find out what was going on. Her respiration quickened as she rushed to get ready. Her mind clung to the dream as she ran out the door and down the stairs, then out another door to the street; she knew where Sage lived, her psychic perception easily told her that. She pressed her tongue up against her palate, another habit that became known when she was nervous or awaiting something, and knocked on the door.   
Sage opened the door, a sparkle in his one visible violet eye--his right eye was always covered with his dirty-blonde hair--as he looked at Tori, rendering the green-eyed girl paralyzed.   
"Hey there!" Sage greeted her happily as he swatted a gnat from the air. For a moment Tori just stared again, her heart stopped in time as well as her breathing, which became shallow, and she imagined a perpetual downward spiral that closely resembled how her insides felt. It was silent in that instant, just as it becomes while a church's pastor is leading in prayer on Sunday morning.   
She had to quickly snap out of her thinking to get to the point, and take on a meditative state of mind to keep it focused, as it had a tendency to drift away someplace else today, but she did get it across. Tori asked Sage whether he had had a strange dream, and he said yes, but it was the night before and he didn't think twice about it. He asked why she wanted to know. Tori still had the morbid thought in her head of the boy with his armor, losing the battle with that freakish creature…she shuddered and let out the tiniest, most subtle hint of a whimper. Sage looked concerned, asked what was wrong; Tori told him about the dream and what she knew she would have seen if it had not faded, all the while even her sanity being whittled down to nothingness. It was ridiculous, but the dream was so vivid…   
Aberrations of reality were frequent now, and Tori was floating in and out of the dream, trying to figure out what it meant, but she could not. She noted the air flowing noisily through the A/C flue for one reason or another, her active mind looking for something to think about.   
She had grabbed herself a seat on the couch several minutes earlier, and shifted in her position. There was a treble voice originating from the stereo, which was playing softly, and a strange caricature of some person or another was hanging on the wall in a little cardboard frame. The libel in her mind telling her that she really wanted some good comfort right now was becoming more apparent. This dream, in some strange way, was horrifying.   
Tori, in need of help, remembered how the prophets had spoken of spiritual battles, bravery included, and with that in mind she beat down the insane need for a hug or just a hand on the shoulder that she hadn't felt in years. She'd be strong, and she wouldn't let this reflect upon the secret she knew now that she shared with Sage. She could win this one, and she knew it; the idea of losing was to her unfathomable.   
Tori stared at the plaited carpet and sighed, getting a headache from all the thinking she'd been doing about nothing in particular. Her vision shifted to the suddenly intriguing threads of her black shirt sleeve. She still thought about things and wondered why Sage was still silent. Inside she was reduced to tears, begging the memories to which she was now flashing back to go away.   
A quiet, unfamiliar croon was heard, and Tori was immediately on alert. It cooed her name, while on the verge of laughing, but not giggling, or any smaller form of laughter; one could just tell that the voice was on the edge of hilarity. Tori donned her subarmor by way of mental summons, a green glow burning the Japanese kanji for "anger" upon her forehead.   
The fanatical hunger for battle, the bloodthirsty yearning she felt every time she put on her armor, swept over Tori. She held it down successfully, but since she had been using the armor often lately, it was more intense. It was getting tougher to restrain it. Floating to the ground was a presence that Tori felt; just something tangible in the air that was not visible. She sensed it jump to the floor.   
Whatever this spirit was, it attacked her, but as it did became visible. As a deranged law of the unnatural creatures of hell, demonic embodiments could not make physical contact while retaining their invisibility. It just couldn't be done. And this was definitely a demon. She saw the gaping mouth with an unidentifiable black substance dripping from the particularly large fangs inside. Its body was shaped as a snake's, slithering about the air in fluid motion much like a sidewinder might swerve across the desert sands.   
She swung her whip at the ugly thing with an ingenuous smirk painted on her face. She knew what sort of demon this was. It was a Serpent, one of the most numb-skulled demon minds. Her insane escapade on the demon was established with a few quick swipes to the bulk, then completed with a lash to the head area, breaking its mock mortal neck. The impish embodiment turned an explosive white color and disintegrated.   
Sage hadn't enough time to move much during the whole ordeal and had not even transformed into his Halo subarmor. He just stared at Tori in bewilderment. She smiled, her battle hunger now passé but still present. She turned from Sage to look around the area, forming a mental map of the territory, figuring that the Enemy may attack again soon.   
"Wow." Sage stated, his eyes still wide. He was about to say something else, but Tori interrupted him, her vacant stare directed toward a garden of camellias that could be seen out the window, decreeing that Sage be alert at all times, constantly watching for the Enemy. Sage nodded and tapped Tori on the shoulder, snapping her out of the staring contest she appeared to be holding with a nearby tree. The faint essence of the adrenaline rush caused by battle still lingered about, but not for too long.   
Tori reverted back to her civilian clothing to find slightly livid patches on one her right arm, where the little demonic pest had whacked her--hard. Miscellaneous dark thoughts filled her head as she wondered what was to come, and wondered whether or not she could keep up her moral rectitude to a moderate level. She stared at the dark, coincidentally sage green umbrage visible outside the window as she wondered what these small battles she had fought lately would add up to and what key that dream held to figuring it out… 

**Author's Notes: **I wrote this as a vocabulary assignment for my 8th grade English class, actually. I didn't want to just write fifty or so unrelated sentences full of words I didn't really understand--so I wrote a fanfic! It won first place in a school writing contest shortly after. I edited out [most of] the words that sounded stupid in the story...but many are still there. My teacher loved it to _death..._personally I don't think this story to be very good, but then, I will never understand the mind of an English teacher... 

But don't hesitate to tell me what you think! Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed (even if I don't, lol)! ~Mistress Jakira 

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Sage. *cries* There, I admitted it. *laughs* And I don't own Ronin Warriors.   
**Reclaimer: **I _do_, however, own Tori. =) 


End file.
